I have heard that it is impossible to get your cell phone game published unless you are an established company. However, I don't quiet understand what that means. Can I register my company with some sort of govermnet agency and build a website and pretend to be an established company? Or do they actually look into your past history and see what games you have made professionaly. Would building a computer game company and selling the game off your website make you an established company? Also, I have recently gotten into JAVA programming and I'm kinda of in a hurry to start making games.So I wondering are there any 2D game engines for sale or free available for phone games? Thanks.

It all depends on what you mean by published.

If you mean putting it on your own web site and allowing people with the right kinds of phones to download and install it, then no, you don't need any kind of registrations.


MIDP uses four trust levels:
+ manufacturer (obviously trusted)
+ operator (the phone company trusts the manufacturer but not other phone companies)
+ trusted third parties (publishers the phone company likes)
+ untrusted (everybody else).

Some phones and services reject all untrusted apps, and if you want to run on them, you must get your MIDlet digitally signed with a certificate issued at one of those trust levels.

Most phones reject access to specific features unless your trust level is high enough. For example, untrusted apps making unverified phone calls or sending SMS without your knowledge. The app manager or other tools can often allow your customers to get around these security features, but sometimes they cannot.

If your app uses functions that are restricted, then you will need to register with the appropriate groups to get digital signatures on your MIDlets if you don't want to get frequent application access warnings, or worse, be simply rejected on those phones.


But...

If your only uses 'normal' functionality and can run with untrusted security, then you don't need any corporate help in releasing your game on websites or other over-the-air distribution services.

Quote:Original post by Darks Fate
So I wondering are there any 2D game engines for sale or free available for phone games? Thanks.

Hi, I'm working on a 2D engine for mobile phones. If you are interested you can download the source from my website! Feedbacks and improvements are welcome :)

Can you please list a couple of publishers which are known to work with indie developers? I know for the computer market garagegames works with indie developers. But I have no idea about the mobile market.

The business section in this page has some experiences by other small indie developers, including getting their first games to market.

shmoove